


a change would do you good

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coulson is great at emotional support, F/M, Fuck You Fandom, Future Fic, Haircuts, Jemma Simmos appearance, Name Changes, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Romance, Skye is flawless whatever name she chooses and fuck the haters, Skye | Daisy Johnson-centric, Skye's family feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 15:28:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4792724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye cuts her hair, changes her name, falls in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a change would do you good

**hair**

The hair thing is not a drastic decision, it doesn't really have any deep meaning (thought she's pretty sure Andrew _will_ ask when he comes back). It was an op. While finding a way to get Simmons out of wherever the hell she is, they still need to deal with day-to-day threats. They were tracking down a group of ex-Hydra hands that seemed to be organizing again. If someone is trying to rebuild the troops they need to know what's up with that. It wasn't supposed to be a difficult mission. Hunter was going to take care of the second guy but he slipped and Skye almost didn't have time to turn around and vibrate the goon against the nearest wall before he used a blade on her. Her hair is not that lucky and the knife cuts off a big chunk. 

_Sorry_ , Hunter says with his big puppy smirk, and Skye is not sure if he means about the hair or about the thin bleeding cut on her cheek.

After they come back that night she knows she has to level it, cut the rest of the hair to the same length. She tells herself it's more practical this way, for the missions, instead of having to tie it up all the time. It's logical, it's not big deal.

A part of her feels satisfaction when it's done and she takes a look at herself in the mirror. After all that happened with her parents, finding out about her origins, losing her family again, a change feels nice. It makes her feel lighter, fresher somehow.

Then she thinks about Simmons – she spends a lot of time these days purposedly not thinking about Simmons, anyway, so it's easy – and how she would have wanted to keep everything in the Playground as it was for when she comes back, and how she doesn't like the idea of Jemma coming back and seeing Skye's new haircut and thinking everybody just managed to move on with their lives without her. Skye feels like she's betraying her.

When she comes into Coulson's office the next morning he looks at her, wrong-footed for a moment, standing next to his desk, waiting for her report. Then he nods slowly, like he either thinks it looks nice or he thinks she had a good reason to cut it.

He watches her carefully as Skye sits down.

"Everything okay with the mission?" he asks.

He's not really asking about the mission. Is he?

"It feels weird," she admits in front of him, touching the ends of a lock of hair. "I haven't worn my hair short since I was thirteen. Actually wanted to shave it off but the nuns wouldn't allow it. So I took a pair of scissors from the art supplies closet –it was locked but you know me– and I just cut it myself. It looked awful. I don't know why I'm telling you all this."

Coulson says nothing, just stares at her a moment. The scrutiny is making her uncomfortable, unexpectedly, and she looks away, touching the back of her neck without realizing she's doing it until she notices Coulson's gaze following her hand.

"Well," Coulson says, catching her glance again. "It should be more comfortable for missions. Right?"

She beams a him, oddly comforted by the words, by Coulson trying to help out with the excuses, knowing she's looking for some.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," she says.

He shrugs. "It's our line of work. Otherwise I'd wear my hair long all the time," he jokes.

It's really bad, but Skye is chuckling anyway.

She finally pulls up the mission file on her tablet. "Okay, can we stop talking about our amazing physiques for a moment and talk about Hydra trying to grow a new head? Because I don't know what's going on but I am disturbed."

He takes a chair and pulls it close to hers. " _Disturbing_ is the first word I thought of, too," he admits, face in a slight grimace of worry and extreme weariness, like he would rather keep on talking about Skye's hair and crack bad jokes to make her feel better about something she hasn't admitted is bothering her.

 

 

**name**

She doesn't decide it from one day to the next, it's not sudden. It's a process.

It has to do with the way she feels after taking Lola on her own and going to see how Cal is doing. It happens two or three times. _Visit_ would be too generous a word. She doesn't step into his practice, she doesn't insinuate herself into his life, she doesn't complicate things. Once she has a coffee in the shop right opposite the practice, watching people come and go, take their pets inside or come pick them up. Skye envies the effortlessness of those people, how they can just go up to Cal and talk to him, their freedom to do so. Once she stands besides the practice's window, looking at Cal talking to a woman with a cute spaniel in her arms, looking at Cal writing a prescription and handing it to her with an afflable smile on his face. He doesn't catch Skye watching through the glass. She's good at disappearing. He'll never know she was there.

Then she spends one night listening to versions of "Daisy Bell" on YouTube and trying to conjure up the ghost memory of her mother singing the tune to her to put her to sleep, not knowing if it's a real memory at all. The last time she heard her mother's voice it was in harsh words against her, telling Skye how worthless she was to her. It's hard to remember the bits of softeness Skye still got to know.

She submits an official request to Coulson, and for a new laynard from Billy.

"You want to be called _Daisy Johnson_ from now on?" Coulson asks, holding the request in his hand.

She shrugs, because she's not sure this is the right thing to do, or who she is doing it for. She feels like a change in a way. She fought to become _Skye_ , fought so hard that she wonders if she even has the right to outgrow that person. If it's even right for her to make that decision.

Except there's no one else around who can make it for her.

"I erased my identity once," she says, watching Coulson's charged silence, because he knows this and has never asked her about that, about the exact circumstances, why she did it. "I can give myself my own name back. The real one, anyway."

"You don't have to blame yourself for what happened to your parents," he says.

This is one of those rare occassions when Coulson is really off the mark, but she is touched that he would worry about her feeling like she _owes_ it to her parents. It's not so much a debt as it is a wish.

"It's not that," she tells him. Coulson waits, obviously curious. And she doesn't owe him an explanation, either – specially not one she is still trying to figure out for herself – but she kind of wants. "I spent most of my life thinking my parents didn't want me. And they did. That's why they gave me the name. It's about my parents, the people they used to be. And I think my mother, Cal, back when I was born, they would have been sad if they knew I'd reject their name for me."

She probably shouldn't bother him with this, so many words about this, but she has found it helps her, talking things through with Coulson, and maybe she can indulge herself this time, use him as a mirror. He would tell her if she were wrong. They do that for each other, right? 

"I'll process your request," he says, leaving the file on his desk. "But you have to give people some time to adjust. We've all known you as just Skye, after all."

He gives her a tiny, guilty smile, like he is apologizing in advance for any possible slip-up.

It's not like she wants to force people to call her something else, that's not the point.

"I love _Skye_ ," she explains. " _Skye_ saved my life. It was a reminder that I got to decide for myself, who I was. Not the nuns, not the blank space of my, not the shrinks and social workers, you know? I gave myself that name because I didn't have anything else. But now I have. A lot. Not just knowing who my parents were, not just knowing that they loved me. This. SHIELD. This place, you guys. I don't need protection anymore. I love _Skye_ but I'm willing to let her go if it's time."

"I love Skye too," Coulson says. Skye gives him a curious smirk. "I mean the – the _name_. But I will use whatever name you want me to, of course. It's your call."

She suddenly feels a pang of sadness thinking that, if she tells him not to, he will never say _Skye_ again, because she has always liked the way Coulson says her name.

"And hey," she adds, her voice lighter, "now you can call me _Agent Johnson_ all sternly when you're cross with me."

He chuckles. "No doubt I'll have _plenty_ of occassions to do that."

"Hey!"

And with that it becomes less of a trauma. It's about Coulson making jokes. About her sending Billy incresingly sillier pictures for her new laynard. About Mack and Hunter conspiring to call her _Mrs Johnson_ like she's an old lady. Changes are scary, but only right before. Afterwards you jump... it's all fine and you wondered why you were so scared in the first place.

It's not that she ever stops being Skye. She _is_ Skye. She's sometimes still just Skye. And sometimes she's Daisy. And for someone who used to have no name of her own, Skye feels somehow rich and blessed that she gets to pick.

"Daisy?" Simmons asks when she comes back, when it's late and everybody has overexhausted themselves welcoming her and now it's just her and Skye cross-legged on the couch. "Just because one gets sucked into an alien dimension for a while, that shouldn't give people the right to go and change their names. It's quite rude."

Skye smiles. Simmons looks tired from it all, but she also looks, in a word she thinks Jemma would favor, _chirpy_.

"You can call me whatever you want, you know that."

Her friend seems to think about it for a moment. " _Daisy_ is a pretty name, though," she says.

Skye thinks about her mother's voice.

"Yes, it is."

 

 

**love**

She didn't plan this either. After Ward she told herself she was probably just not meant to have this kind of thing. It mades sense that she didn't have the right to want it. After she transformed into her Inhuman self even more so. Now it makes sense that it happens right after Ward is gone for good. It makes sense that it's after they have fought so hard to have some sort of peace between humans and gifted people, carving out a space where people like her and Coulson can stand side by side.

It's not something that catches up with her in a single moment or a sudden realization, like in the movies. Maybe because everything about her life – death and destruction following her, a psycho obsessing over her, her very biology which was a constant reminder she was a weapon – told her that she couldn't have it, the very notion crept up on her, coming from the least expected place.

"I never thought about it," Coulson tells her. Not quite honest, Mister Director, she thinks, because he didn't think about it until _just now_ , he means.

"Me neither," she admits, finally pulling her mouth away from his, listening to the accusatory silence in his office.

It fits, when she thinks about it. She had loved Miles once upon a time because he had wanted to take care of her. She had thought she could love Ward one day because she believed he was just like her. So yeah, it's not strange that she ends up here, that her heart ends up with someone like Coulson.

"We should talk about this," she says, brushing her thumb across the knot of his tie, but respectfully, not like she's dying to kiss him again.

"Or maybe forget about it," Coulson replies, clearing his voice a bit, straightening his tie a bit.

"Is that what you want to do?" she asks, honestly. "Forget it?"

He doesn't give her an answer right away, and she wasn't expecting one.

This is long after they _both_ started to believe that part of their lives was over.

Long after she realizes that's not true, it doesn't have to be true, they don't have to be alone.

Long after the world tried to make her choose between being a SHIELD agent and being an Inhuman and she refused.

Long after Coulson gets used to calling her _Agent Johnson_ for missions, _Daisy_ most of the time, _Skye_ when she needs him to.

Long after she knows Coulson feels the same, has been feeling the change, the shift. He struggles with his own attraction for someone who was always supposed to be a protege of some sorts. He struggles more than she does because he has more to lose. He struggles with the fact that he is her boss. He doesn't say it but she knows he also struggles with the idea of seeing his body as something sexual again, and to let another human being see him like that.

"It's your call," she tells him, sometime later, letting the ball stay in his court as long as he needs, because she might think the rule is _a really dumb one_ as she told him, but if it's important to Coulson, she's not going to take that away from him. She knows his other reasons for his reluctance – not wanting anyone to think she has achieved such a prominent position in SHIELD for any reason other than her skills and principles, for example – are part of what she loves in him. "I'm not asking for your virtuous hand in marriage here, Coulson. Just to sit down with you somewhere and eat some food and explore why we keep wanting to kiss a lot. I think that's reasonable."

She doesn't know if she's being reasonable or just selfish. She's fine with either. There has never been a place for selfishness in her life. She wonders what that feels like. Maybe selfishness feels like this: having dinner with Coulson in town and being a bit awkward about it, in a kind of out-of-the-way (she's sort of famous now) humble restaurant she picked. He's not wearing a tie. She realizes this might be the first proper first date she's been in her life. She's not supposed to have these things; she's not even supposed to _want_ these things. She doesn't care. He jokes about this being the first date he's been in since he became a zombie. She laughs and had no doubt they were always destined to end up here, in this restaurant, in this night, this is where their hearts should be.

When Coulson finally lets her take him to her bunk she feels like a weight has been lifted. For months, for years maybe. Ward is dead but his influence was overreaching – she has been wondering, all this time, if she could ever feel safe around a guy, in this sense, again. She has the answer now. It's not strange Coulson is the one to give it to her. He has given her so many things already, yeah, she's not surprised. Not as much as he is anyway.

There are other surprises: she thought he'd be _delicate_ , that kind of shy first date guy, but careful and delicate are not the same thing, and soon after they close the door he's sat her on the edge of the bed and yanked her jeans and panties down, and he's on his knees on the floor of her room, curling his right hand over her thigh as he drags her further down the bed and she moves her hips forward against his mouth.

Change is good, change feels _so good_ , she thinks when she comes like this, her foot digging into his back, his tongue inside her, making her feel loved and safe and free and all the things that, after Miles, after Ward, after the temple in San Juan, after her parents, she didn't know she could feel again.

"I'm still your boss," he says while she recovers, pressing his mouth against the curve of her knee.

"Yeah," she agrees, trying to catch her breath. "And we'll have to talk about it."

"At length," he warns.

"I promise," she promises, meaning it, but grabbing the neck of his shirt and pulling him up and onto the bed with her.

He strokes the back of her neck as they go to sleep afterwards, lays kisses where the hair is shorter, he calls her _Daisy_ in the familiar, sing-song way she has learned to love.

"I was thinking about wearing it long again," she says.

"Your hair? Mmm," he moans between her shoulder-blades, throwing his arm around her, and she wraps her hand around the spot where flesh meets prosthetic and thinks about how much Coulson must have trust her, too, to let her see him like this, how he must have felt just as safe. "A bit impractical for missions, long hair."

"Yeah. But I feel like a change."

Coulson sighs against the skin of her back and she can feel his eyelashes move over it as he closes his eyes.

"Change is good," he says.


End file.
